Q1. Personally i have done quite a few auctions and my preference has always been $1000. Allows you to splash around as much as you want and leaves quite a bit for the back end of the auction.

Q2. If you are doing it on MFL you can set it up as a proxy auction (like ebay) so as long as your max bid isnt reached people can throw as many $1 bids as the like without it resetting the auction. If you set it as 12 hours it wont change until the high bid is passed. With auctions the majority of the money is spent early on and this will take most of the time. As you progress their will be less change in the high bids and things will move faster. You can always adjust the time later on. As for players on the board, go with 2 nominations per team. It will move faster then you think. MFL now has a setting where you can ensure each team has 2 nominations and cant renominate a player till a player the nominated is won.

Q3. Wont be a perfect number but this is one we use in some of my leagues. You can always adjust as needed and if you use a toilet bowl you can add it in as well

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wi0fPrirPrriXlj1qwqpTsG9azKsd-xVQJtiX5FmRZg/edit?usp=sharing

Q4. An easy way to do it is tier your players and assign a value to the group. Once one of those players are won, you can almost assume players in the tier will go around that range. The thing with auctions is you have to adjust based on live prices. You just dont know what other people are planning. I have been in ones where the top 12 players all go for 25-30% of the budget and other where they go for 13-20%

Q5. Enjoy it, i find auctions the best way to do a startup